Bee Space Nine
by qwanderer
Summary: A secret relationship story in which Garak is a closet Anglophile and Bashir makes him read the Mary Russell Mysteries by Laurie R. King. Follows the plot of the series but delves into things that might have been happening. Contains open relationships, mentions of suicidal thoughts, and is just generally more serious than the title makes it sound.
1. His Last Bow

**A/N:** This story spoils emotional plot points from the Mary Russell Mysteries, and reveals the occasional element of some of the mysteries (Justice Hall and The Language of Bees so far), but it doesn't reveal the endings and you don't have to read the books to understand the fic.

Literary references include the Doyle canon of Sherlock Holmes in general, His Last Bow in particular, the Mary Russell Mysteries by Laurie R. King, and Shakespeare, especially Hamlet.

Crossposted from the series My Dear Doctor on AO3, where much more of my work lives.

* * *

 **His Last Bow**

 _Von Bork laughed. "They are not very hard to deceive," he remarked. "A more docile, simple folk could not be imagined."_

 _"I don't know about that," said the other thoughtfully. "They have strange limits and one must learn to observe them. It is that surface simplicity of theirs which makes a trap for the stranger. One's first impression is that they are entirely soft. Then one comes suddenly upon something very hard, and you know that you have reached the limit and must adapt yourself to the fact."_

\- observations on the English by a pair of German Spies, _His Last Bow_ , Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

* * *

When Elim Garak had first studied the Federation, their culture and language, his interest had almost immediately been drawn to the British Empire. The language and culture of one small island had spread itself across half the world, and then? Well, other Terrans had fought back, gained independence, overthrown the influence of the English.

Or had they?

When the Cardassians had overthrown the Hebetian culture, the whole planet became Cardassia. When they spread into space, the whole empire became Cardassia.

As much as Garak adored and served Cardassia, as much as he would never breathe a word of his opinion to anyone lest he appear disloyal, he found the whole thing a little... unsubtle, for his taste.

The English language had taken root in enough of Earth's nations that it was the one that people learned if they wanted to be able to communicate wherever they went. England may no longer have ruled, but many of the pieces of literature with the most influence on culture seemed to have come from there, well into the twenty-first century.

The latest incarnation of the language may have been renamed Federation Standard, to avoid any unpleasant reminders of its association with Earth, let alone that small island where it had begun, but the simple fact was that it was English words that were spoken in the scope of Federation influence, from Penthara to Caldos, from the Terran island where it had begun to the far-flung outposts of deep space stations.

That was a kind of hidden power that Elim Garak very much admired. Why had that language, that culture, those stories endured and spread across the galaxy while others quietly kept to their pockets on Earth? What was it about England, the English?

As he studied, as he read, he found in those roots a strange, quite alien, but nonetheless appealing idea of nobility in fairness, of sportsmanship, of giving the other side a chance to display their own merits before firmly, if jovially, putting them back in their place.

 _"After all, you have done your best for your country, and I have done my best for mine, and what could be more natural? Besides," he added, not unkindly, as he laid his hand upon the shoulder of the prostrate man, "it is better than to fall before some more ignoble foe."_

To make an enemy feel that, in some vague way, they were an equal, respected, even as they were being brushed aside or tromped underfoot, oh, it was clever. A clever way to make friends of those who might be turned. A clever way to retain dignity while drenched in the mess of deceit and war.

His interest was merely academic, or at least Garak told himself that - until his exile. Then, everything he had ever learned about Federation culture became vitally important. Everything he had theorized about surviving outside the original context of one's culture was about to be tested to its limits.

Could he survive here? Could he come to be respected, enough to make his way among them, and still remain Cardassian enough to hope to one day return to his people?

Perhaps he could find that in-between place, that sort of sportsmanlike attitude that made opponents into friends, without ever compromising oneself to them.

Sacrifices would have to be made, of course, but that was the joy of every Cardassian, to sacrifice for the good of Cardassia.

It could get very lonely, if he was never able to experience fellowship with someone who thought similarly. But Garak had hope, if slim, then still unquenchable, that he would.

 _"But you, Holmes - you have changed very little - save for that horrible goatee."_

 _"These are the sacrifices one makes for one's country, Watson," said Holmes, pulling at his little tuft. "To-morrow it will be but a dreadful memory. With my hair cut and a few other superficial changes I shall no doubt reappear at Claridge's to-morrow as I was before this American stunt - I beg your pardon, Watson, my well of English seems to be permanently defiled - before this American job came my way."_

 _"But you have retired, Holmes. We heard of you living the life of a hermit among your bees and your books in a small farm upon the South Downs."_

 _It had seemed so strange to Garak, when he had first read the piece. Why would such a man retire, if he could still be of use to the empire he so loved?_

 _Now, in retrospect, it made Garak quite angry. Garak himself had no choice. A sedate, respectable life out of the action was all he could hope for, for now. To survive. To observe. To be useful when the time came._

 _What in the galaxy could make it bearable?_

 _Someone with whom he could play the English game of spies?_


	2. The Beekeeper's Apprentice

**The Beekeeper's Apprentice**

 _"And," I said, warming to the topic, "what happens when her equal comes along, another queen with which she might have something in common? They are both forced - for the good of the hive - to fight to the death."_

\- Mary Russell upon first meeting Sherlock Holmes, _The Beekeeper's Apprentice_ , Laurie R. King

* * *

There wasn't supposed to be any pain. Not anymore. But he'd felt... a flicker.

It must have been his imagination.

But no. There it was again. This was the end, then. The implant was failing.

It had to happen just at the wrong time, too, while he and Bashir navigated the lunchtime rush. Once the doctor knew there was something wrong, he would not give up easily.

It wouldn't help. Nothing would help. Slipping away, unnoticed, would have been better.

But no. Here he was, a wretched addict coming to his inevitable, undignified end. And here was the good English doctor, a witness to it all. Pushing for more, for information about the implant, the Obsidian Order, his exile.

Garak didn't have the strength anymore to hold any of it back.

"...And left me to live out my days with nothing to look forward to but having lunch with you!"

"I'm sorry you feel that way. I thought you enjoyed my company."

"I did. And that's the worst part. I can't believe that I actually enjoyed eating mediocre food and staring into at your smug, sanctimonious face. I hate this place and I hate you!"

* * *

Well. He'd lived. And still, what was there to live for except those lunches? Garak supposed he'd have to do what he could to rebuild that bridge, the only one he had, the one he might have burned down in his agony.

He looked through what he had access to in his collection that might suit a young man who'd come as far out in space as Starfleet would send him, an idealistic and intrigue-loving but also remarkably intelligent young man.

Hmm. Preloc's Meditations on a Crimson Shadow might do.

* * *

"So you like this?" Bashir asked, twiddling the isolinear rod in his fingers. "It's not The Neverending Sacrifice."

"How astute of you," Garak replied with barely a twitch of his lips. "No, it's not. It is, as you might say, a completely different beast. Written in a different time, for a different purpose."

"Does this have a purpose?" Julian asked. "Other than to entertain, I mean? It seems like exactly the type of escapist adventure that doesn't have to mean anything more than that it's fun."

Garak clicked his tongue. "Every piece of literature has a purpose," he argued.

"So what is the purpose of this delightful space adventure?" Julian asked, eyes glinting.

"In this context?" Garak said. "Well, why don't you tell me something you learned from the experience of having read it."

"I learned," Julian drawled, "that you thought I would enjoy reading it. You were right, by the way."

"Well, now," Garak said. "Isn't that interesting."

The doctor chuckled. "I suppose it is." He tapped the rod lightly on the table, then looked up at Garak, a little hesitant. "But you never answered my question. Did you recommend this because you like it? Or only because you thought I would?"

Garak took a breath, and cocked his head. "I have to admit, it isn't something I'd read with only my own tastes in mind."

"You really do prefer The Neverending Sacrifice, don't you?" He sounded a little sad.

Garak turned that over in his head before answering. "Context is everything," he said. "And perhaps a Federation lunch table is not the place for The Neverending Sacrifice."

Julian looked him in the eyes and said, "I'd like this to be the right place for it. I'd like to understand it."

"Would you really?" Garak asked.

He nodded. "I would, really."

And Garak could almost believe he was answering the question Garak had really meant to ask.

Still, he sighed a little. Such a thing would not be easy, not for either of them. "Don't strain yourself unduly, Doctor," he said. "We find ourselves, in any given piece of literature, or we don't. Don't expect to find anyone other than the consummate Cardassian in The Neverending Sacrifice."

"And that's you, is it?" Julian asked.

Garak's only answer was a smile.

Bashir looked back at him thoughtfully for a moment. "Have you ever read any Sherlock Holmes?" he asked.

He turned narrowed eyes on the doctor. "Why?" Garak devoutly hoped the man didn't know how long he'd kept a copy of Doyle's work tucked away, or somehow suspect the related and more embarrassing fact that the young, mischievous English doctor walking onto the station had been a desperate daydream brought to life.

Julian laughed, misunderstanding the suspicious look. "No, I wouldn't try and get you to read it if you hadn't. As much as Fleming and Doyle and the rest of the classics of early British suspense are part of me, I do see how they could bore or frustrate someone who's actually lived with that kind of suspense." He shrugged. "Or a plain, simple tailor who can't imagine himself in the role of a detective or a spy."

Garak suspected that the truth, or at least one small part of it, would serve him best now. "It's one of the first pieces of Earth literature I ever attempted to read," he said. "Truly fascinating. The idiom and imagery that are derived from it still permeate your language, all these centuries later."

"Know your enemies?" the doctor asked.

"Or your customers, perhaps," Garak playfully evaded.

"And that was all you got out of some of the most sensational literature of its time? Simply some knowledge about humans?"

"Doctor, even you should know that it's no use trying to cut the fabric for a coat until you have the measure of the person who will be wearing it."

Julian made a moue. "That wasn't a yes," he remarked. Then he leaned forward, to say in a stage whisper, "I think you liked it."

"And if I did," Garak asked curiously, "what would that tell you?"

He looked at Garak, and his head tilted to one side, then the other. "Did you see yourself in Holmes?" he asked, and then, without waiting long for an answer, "Let me guess. His Last Bow is your favorite."

The doctor was getting rather close for comfort, there.

Garak shook his head. "The stories were scattered," he said. "Disorganized. I don't know how all you humans stand them."

"I tend to approach them with a Watsonian perspective, myself," Julian said with a smirk. "Many of the apparent imperfections of the stories can actually add to its richness, if you look at them as signs that Watson, the chronicler, was only human and not entirely perfect. It's something we refer to as an 'unreliable narrator.'"

Garak frowned theatrically. "Why, doctor, what good is a story if you can't trust the person telling it?"

Julian's expression said he knew he was being teased. He grinned warmly for a minute before replying earnestly, "Oh, the things they don't say can tell you just as much as the things they do."

"And do you see yourself in Holmes?" Garak asked. "Or in Watson?"

"Sometimes," Bashir said. "Sometimes Watson's limited perspective frustrates me. I'd like to meet Homes as he was, or would have been, not as Watson sees him. There's more to the character, I think."

Garak leaned forward this time, interested. "And what do you think you would see?"

Julian smiled. "I think if I were to guess, that would say more about me than about the character," he evaded.

Now this was an interesting game. There was some piece of information Julian wanted to impart, but it seemed like he was going to make Garak work for it.

"That's no less incentive for me to be curious," he told the doctor. "After all, why should I value insight into Doyle's intention over insight into the mind at hand? The tastes currently relevant, as it were?"

"I suppose there's something to that," Julian said. "You know, Holmes has been written over and over again since he was invented by Doyle, in different ways, from different perspectives, for different audiences."

"Pale imitations, as a rule, I suppose," Garak said, pushing for more. "Spare me the sentimental yearning for days gone by that is inevitably the product of trying to reproduce the same story time and again."

"Says the man who champions the repetitive epic." Julian shook his head.

"My dear doctor," Garak scoffed, "continuity of a single story among generations of people is _life_. Dwelling on a single life of a single character for generations of writers is _stagnation_."

It was an elegant lie. He looked forward to hearing the doctor counter it.

"Perhaps. But then, will Dax ever tire of telling the stories of her former lives? Is it ever really the same story? When Jadzia talks about something Tobin got up to, is it really the same story that Curzon would have told? Or is it a new story, dependent on the voice of the teller and the assumptions of the audience?"

Garak changed his mind. Hearing how fascinated Julian was by trills in general and Dax in particular was not how he wanted to spend his lunch. A little sourly, he said, "I really wouldn't know."

"Hum," said Julian, looking at him contemplatively, a wrinkle between his brows. Then he shook himself, and took out an isolinear rod. "Well, you can tell me if you still think that after you've read this."

"What is it?" Garak asked, taking the little rod, eyeing his reward.

"The Beekeeper's Apprentice. Written more than sixty years after the death of Arthur Conan Doyle."

Well. That did sound somewhat interesting.

* * *

Garak began the book with a multitude of questions on many levels. Context was everything. The doctor had given this book to him, now, for a reason. How much did he know? How much suspected? How much was gleaned simply from watching Garak's face, reading it with an aptitude Garak hadn't thought him capable of?

There were some layers of the message that were immediately transparent. Holmes was retired, of course. A simple beekeeper. His young friend was as fascinated by him as he was charmed by her. It was certainly written in a more incisive, organized style than Doyle's, and clearly due to the perspective of this new character, Mary Russell. Holmes was still Holmes, in all the ways that mattered.

And then, the new chronicler met the old.

 _He was looking at me with such complete, unaffected pleasure that I simply could not think what to do, so I just stood there. Stupidly._

 _"Miss Russell, I am so very happy to meet you at last. I will speak quickly because I think Holmes is about to arise. I wanted to thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for what you have done for my friend in the last few months. Had I read it in a casebook I would not have believed it, but I see and believe."_

 _"You see what?" I said. Stupidly. Like a buffoon._

 _"I'm sure you knew that he was ill, though not perhaps how ill. I watched him and despaired, for I knew that at that rate he would not see a second summer, possibly not even the new year. But since May he has put on half a stone, his heartbeat is strong, his colour good, and Mrs. Hudson says he sleeps - irregularly, as always, but he sleeps. He says he has even given up the cocaine to which he was rapidly becoming addicted - given it up. I believe him. And I thank you, with all my soul, for you have done what my skills could not, and brought back my truest friend from the grave."_

This was an artful blow if ever there was one, delivered subtly at first, and then falling like a hammer. The Holmes Garak had seen himself in had always contained that potential to fall, to become a wretched addict merely waiting for death. And here he was, but that wasn't all he was. Never, even at his lowest moment.

Garak hadn't even seen it, because the perspective had been Russell's, and Russell hadn't truly noticed. Had never focused on Holmes's health.

What this communicated most vividly was a complete lack of pity. Despite everything, Russell had enjoyed Holmes's company for the sheer joy of their conversations, for what she learned from him. The concern was all the professional concern of the doctor, and had no bearing on the motivation Russell had had to remain close.

How lucky Holmes was to have found her.

How lucky Garak was now to have his dear doctor and his brilliant young apprentice in one magnificent Julian-shaped package. No pity. Medical concern clearly delineated from personal interest.

Message received, my dear doctor.

Garak spared a moment to be grateful that the fact of his species spared him from the indignity of tears. Then, he did the only thing he could do. He picked the book back up, and continued to read.

 _I stood there struck dumb with confusion. Holmes, ill? He had looked thin and grey when we first met, but dying? A sardonic voice from the next room made us both start guiltily._

 _"Oh come now, Watson, don't frighten the child with your exaggerated worries." Holmes came to the door in his mouse-coloured robe. "'From the grave' indeed. Overworked, perhaps, but one foot in the grave, hardly. I admit that Russell has helped me relax, and God knows I eat more when she is here, but it is little more than that. I'll not have you worrying the child that she's in any way responsible for me, do you hear, Watson?"_

 _The face that turned towards me was so stricken with guilt that I felt the last of my wish to dislike him dissolve, and I began to laugh._

 _"But, I only wished to thank her - "_

 _"Very well, you've thanked her. Now let us have our tea while Mrs. Hudson finds some breakfast for us. Death and resurrection," he snorted. "Ridiculous!"_

I'danian spiced pudding, indeed.

Well, if Bashir might never be able to see himself in The Neverending Sacrifice, at least they could find pieces of themselves and each other in this most admirable choice of works.

This was a message Garak believed because it was not said in straightforward words, but in gestures and in struggles and in sacrifices. It was a gift Garak could not have truly accepted, had it been given any other way.

To be seen. To be seen, and not flinched from. To be seen, and loved.


	3. The First Blast of the Trumpet

**A/N:** I took the title for this chapter from the other part of the same book title that King took _hers_ from: The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, by John Knox.

This was partially inspired by the Garashir trope of Julian reading a Cardassian romance and not realizing it was a romance. I kinda wanted to turn the tables.

* * *

 **The First Blast of the Trumpet**

 _"Go on, Russell, you may as well ask your question; you've spent seven hours in getting here. Or perhaps I ought to say, six years?"_

 _"What on earth are you talking about?" I was very cross at the threat of having my nice evening spoilt by his sardonic, all-knowing air, though God knows, I should have been used to it by then._

\- _A Monstrous Regiment of Women_ , Laurie R. King

* * *

The whole station was abuzz about the run-in with the Jem'Hadar in the Gamma Quadrant, and the Federation's new ship, the Defiant. Sending the little warship out to poke around the potential hornet's nest of a situation may have been the sensible route.

Garak didn't like it, but he wasn't sure whether it was simply the kind of strategy better left to those who were more warriors than spies, or if there was actually something about what he'd managed to gather about the situation that was making his instincts prickle.

More worryingly, he wasn't sure whether he would have felt the same reaction if Julian hadn't been on the ship.

When the Defiant failed to check in on time, Garak knew that it wasn't so simple. His instincts had been telling him something, but if his dear doctor hadn't been aboard, he wouldn't have felt like _this._

In time, Julian came back to the station safe and sound, but with a dark look in his eye, a little grim and very determined. Garak, of course, wasn't going to ask him directly what had happened. Garak would hear about it eventually, one way or another. What Julian needed now, Garak deduced, was normalcy. Or at least enough of it for whatever had happened to unspool naturally in his head.

He came by just as Garak was closing the shop. "Garak, do you have a minute?" he asked.

Garak looked him over. He didn't look up to a sparring session in the Replimat, and anything more serious was better done in private. He'd broken into the doctor's before. It seemed to be his turn to be imposed upon. "My quarters?" he asked.

"Yes, please."

Once there, they sat in silence for a good few minutes, Garak offering Julian a cool drink to compensate for the heat of his quarters, but giving up his own cup of hot red leaf tea when Julian reached for it instead.

"You finished The Beekeeper's Apprentice?" Julian asked at last.

"I did," Garak admitted. "Thank you for lending it to me." He wasn't about to treat this like one of their usual lunchtime discussions. It clearly meant too much to both of them.

"You remember what they first said to each other, when Russ woke up, after everything?"

"Of course."

"'I am glad you're alive.'"

Garak had no idea why Julian would say that to him, when the doctor was the one who'd been on a dangerous mission to the Gamma quadrant, facing off against the Jem Hadar. But he suspected the best way to learn would be to say the words Holmes had said next.

"'Our trap caught its prey, but it nearly took you with it. I had not intended quite such a generous sacrifice.'"

Julian took a breath, sipped his tea. "We made contact with the Dominion," he said. "We weren't ready. They had us at their mercy. They made me watch you die. They made me believe it was real."

"Oh, my dear doctor," he said. He didn't understand why Julian cared so much for him, but he knew the feelings were there. "Well. Here I am. Exactly where you left me."

"Yes," Julian said. "Exactly as I left you."

What _was_ this? Garak almost wished he hadn't let go of his tea. He wasn't in the habit of fidgeting, of giving in to the weakness of needing something to do with his hands beyond the necessary, but some situations just seemed to call for it.

Julian's hands, though, did move with nervousness, with hesitation, drumming against the sides of the cup. Then, as though bracing himself, he reached into his bag and pulled out another rod.

"There's more, you know," he said. He raised his eyebrows, looking a little more alive himself, more like the young doctor Garak had come to know. "This is the second Russell book. A Monstrous Regiment of Women."

Garak opened his mouth to reply, then frowned. Even with the seriousness and ceremony this book was being given, even greater than the first, he had to ask. "What kind of a title is that?"

Bashir pouted. "Well, if you're going to be like that..." He made as if to put the rod back. "What kind of a title is 'Meditations on a Crimson Shadow'?"

Garak sighed theatrically. "Give that here. It can't possibly be as unbearable as the title suggests."

"It's not unbearable at all. Of course the same can't be said for the book its title was stolen from, but that's an entirely different story. Or rather, regressive political rant."

Garak held out his hand, raising his eye ridges.

Julian laid the rod in his hand, the ceremony back in the interaction. "I really do hope you like it, Elim," he said quietly.

Garak blinked. He'd had no idea Julian even knew that was his name.

* * *

Garak reared back from the reader as the sentence registered, not ten pages in.

 _"I expect you came to ask me to marry you."_

This was a romance. It was a romance, and he hadn't noticed it happening. And not because of cultural differences he was unaware of, either. In fact, it was almost a Cardassian romance. The mention of marriage had to have seemed as if it came out of nowhere, by human standards. But by Cardassian ones? It shouldn't have been a surprise at all.

By Cardassian standards, they'd been flirting openly since they met. Russell all of fifteen and spitting brilliant, irritated, backhanded insults from the moment they'd set eyes on each other as if they'd known each other for years, and Holmes not hesitating to return fire.

Garak had carefully recalibrated his filters for Earth literature to something more resembling human interpretation. He feared now that that had been to underestimate Julian significantly.

He got up, composed himself, and went to find the doctor, who was probably sound asleep in his quarters after his return from what sounded like a particularly exhausting adventure. He was prepared to break in again, but Julian answered his chime, eyes bright, expectant.

"What is this?" Garak asked, holding up the padd he'd loaded the book onto. He strode inside as the doctor moved to let him.

"The second Russ book. I said."

"And you've read this one yourself?" Garak asked, beginning to pace.

"Oh, I've read all of them. There are more than twenty."

"So you knew what you were giving me."

Julian smiled widely. "Most definitely."

"You let me prattle on about seeing ourselves in the characters, when we were discussing the two parties in a _romance?_ "

The look in the doctor's eyes was gently mocking. "Oh, was it not clear that it was a romance?"

Oh, hell. It was true that it was fair play. Garak had been flirting outrageously with the man steadily for a year and change, counting on Julian's ignorance of Cardassian culture to keep himself safe from any real consequences of the game. This... this simply made it clear that the doctor was onto him. That he understood what they'd been doing.

"It really should have been," Garak answered with a rueful smile.

Julian laughed lightly, stepping into Garak's space and placing two heavy, warm hands on his shoulders. "When I saw you again after... what they showed me... I didn't want to waste any more time. I just want you, Elim. All of you that you're willing to share."

"My dear," said Garak. "I don't know what to say."

He laughed again, an effervescent sound. "A rare and notable occasion, then," he said. "Shall we celebrate?"

Garak stepped in closer to the warmth of Julian's arms. "What did you have in mind?"

Julian kissed him, softly, on the lips.

It was dizzying. He'd never been touched quite like this before. Carefully, he returned the press of lips enough to convey his agreement, but stopped just short of getting lost in it, pulling back to look at Julian.

"Really, Doctor? Are you sure about this? You know I'm not..."

Julian laid a gentle finger on his lips to silence him. "You should finish the book," he said.

* * *

The two characters went about their own separate lives, working on their own separate problems, only coming back together on occasion but getting so much out of each meeting. That was appealing, so different than the sopping clinginess that he'd been led to believe was the bread and butter of Terran romances.

Oh, yes. And there was one other thing to be said for Mary Russell. She did appreciate the value of a good tailor.

The plot was entertaining, even to an old and experienced spy, and he soon found what Julian had sent him in search of.

 _"You do realize how potentially disastrous this whole thing is?" he said. "I am old and set in my ways. I will give you little affection and a great deal of irritation, though heaven knows you're aware of how difficult I can be."_

 _"And you smoke foul tobacco and get down in the dumps for days and mess about with chemicals..."_

Garak laughed. That? That was an answer.

He finished the book, and got up to go and find his darling doctor.


	4. Locked Rooms

**Locked Rooms**

 _"Russell, we are sailing on a straight path for the place that holds the most troubling memories of your childhood. It is only natural that you feel concern about seeing the place that burned to the ground when you were six..."_

\- Sherlock Holmes, to his wife, upon their approach to San Francisco, _Locked Rooms_ , Laurie R. King

* * *

The first thing Garak did when he entered Bashir's quarters that night was activate a sound jammer. It deadened the sound going out of a circle around the device with a radius of two yards. Julian watched him with wide eyes.

"There are some things that need to be said," Garak told him, "and they must be said with no doubt or ambiguity. I don't like having to say things outright, but sometimes it's necessary."

"I understand," Julian said.

"You may think you know what you're getting yourself into, but trust me, you are not prepared for the consequences of being publicly involved with me."

Julian sighed, sinking down onto the sofa. "I know who you are, Elim. I know the kinds of things you've done."

"Then you know I have enemies. Deadly ones."

"Do you think that's going to scare me off?"

"No," Garak said, sitting down on the other end of the sofa where Julian indicated. "You're far too dogged for that, Julian."

Julian's smile went warm and bright at hearing his given name from Garak for the first time.

"But I must insist that we keep our involvement secret. I believe we're both capable of doing this in a way that won't provoke anything concrete from even the most inveterate gossips on the station. We share meals in public no more than three times a week, and keep things as they have been, where other eyes can see."

Julian nodded. "I don't think I'll have a problem pretending that I'm still trailing after you like a puppy, fascinated by your secrets. I mean, I still am, really. I don't doubt that you'll always have more secrets to frustrate and intrigue me with."

Garak couldn't let himself get caught up in this quite yet. He had more to say first.

"We visit each other's quarters no more than once a week. Overnight stays are permitted; I have no illusions about anything else being satisfactory to either of us. But we leave at the same time, or the visitor leaves first but after the host has risen, and the visitor must always bring something, a book or other small, friendship-appropriate gift, so that he may pretend to have simply stopped by to drop it off."

This time Julian nodded solemnly. Perhaps this really could work.

"And we really should date other people," Garak said, watching Julian's face to see what he thought of that.

He frowned, but didn't seem angry or shocked. "I thought Cardassians didn't take kindly to that sort of thing?" he asked.

Garak pursed his lips as he thought how to explain this. "There are rules," he said. "First and foremost, no children out of wedlock. Cheating on a spouse is frowned upon for its own sake, but the only truly heinous crime is producing offspring with someone who is not your spouse. We will not be married, and you are not Cardassian and therefore not subject to the same standards of family integrity, but I still trust you will have the restraint not to impregnate anyone else while we're involved."

"That won't happen!" Julian said firmly. "And couldn't we just... flirt with other people? A few dates, maybe, and no further? I don't want anyone but you."

"My dear... I believe you, but I also insist the rules be clear from the beginning. You may yet change your mind."

Julian looked hard at him. "Is that what you really want?" he asked.

"I want you to be safe from my enemies, yes."

"And you want to watch me go off to bed with other people, to make that happen?"

"Absolutely," Garak said, and that was only a little bit of a lie. "It will make me feel better if the terms are equal, and you should know that I will do whatever I think will increase the chances of your survival, and my own. I won't have as many opportunities as you to provide cover for us, I'm sure, but rest assured, when they come I will take them."

Julian nodded again, mouth tight, but he seemed to understand. "So no requirement of 'sleep with other people no less often than six times a year' or anything like that?" he said with a hint of a smile.

"My dear Julian, I am sure those things will progress naturally enough for you, and their progressing naturally will be better cover than either of us could possibly invent," Garak replied.

"I'm not so sure that they will," Julian said, his gaze on Garak's face fond and steady.

Garak smiled back, just as fond. "Oh, you are adorable," he said.

Julian wrinkled his nose.

"But if you accept my terms," Garak said, "then tonight, here, from this moment on, is just for us."

"I can live with that," Julian said, and started to lean forward, and Garak's careful restraint sang like a plucked string finally released. He all but pounced on Julian, straddling his lap and letting his fingers explore that oddly soft, delicate neck.

He gasped when Julian's hands, in turn, brushed his ridges, then pulled him down for a kiss.

* * *

Outside the walls of their quarters, things went on as they always had, mostly.

The Mary Russell books were like gifts. They never used those books for the sake of argument. They hardly ever discussed them in the Replimat. There were very few words at all, in fact. But just occasionally, Julian would drop one into his hand, and they'd share a look.

They used the books as the basis of a code for important feelings, so that a word or two which would sound more or less like one of their usual literature discussions could mean infinitely more.

Garak was almost finished reading A Letter of Mary when Major Kira was kidnapped by the Obsidian Order. They'd been playing with the concept of paranoia and secrets, using the images from the book as symbols. When Garak got back from rescuing Kira, there was more to be said with it about that moment of realization when a perceived foe becomes a potential friend.

The Moor had been dropped into his hand a few days before the station's anti-insurgency protocols were accidentally activated. It became a way to talk about the experience of being a guide on familiar but extremely treacherous ground.

After the events of Julian's thirtieth birthday, O Jerusalem provided the vocabulary for them to express how fond they really were of each other, and how they found peace in each other's presence despite everything.

When Garak blew up his own shop, Julian gave him an isolinear rod containing Justice Hall and a rather significant look, a clear message to study it carefully.

Several of the characters were excessively Cardassian. Gabriel, for one, could almost have been a character in The Neverending Sacrifice. Family, country, loyalty and self-sacrifice pumped through their veins. There was even a morbid string of unfortunate "accidents," to make the whole tale more relevant to current events.

But the message of this book was an incredibly human one - these deaths should never have happened. These people should not have had to give up their lives and their loves. The characters were happier, stronger and more successful when they let themselves go after what their hearts desired, rather than what duty demanded.

Garak sighed, and admitted in the privacy of his own head that the humans might have had a point about that.

Sometimes.

* * *

Sometimes they would have frank conversations in the morning, before Garak turned the sound jammer off.

"Who were you dreaming about?" Garak asked one morning, when Julian had been flailing in his sleep and mumbling some names that were definitely not any of Garak's.

Julian sighed. "Palis, my ex-girlfriend, mostly."

"You miss her."

"No. Not really." Julian looked sideways af Garak. "Well."

"Far be it from me to recommend honesty," Garak said gently, "but I assure you, I won't be hurt."

Julian dropped his hands over his face. "How do you tell your boyfriend you miss being in a relationship?"

"Not like that," Garak replied, half gentle mocking and half genuine advice. "You want something I can't give you. My dear, I do understand."

"Elim, I love you, I do. It's just... I want to be able to hold hands with someone on the promenade. Go out to dinner at the Klingon restaurant and request a romantic serenade. I want to be able to tell my friends how happy I am to be with someone."

"You have someone in mind?" Garak prodded.

"You know I'd really like to do those things with you," Julian whined.

"I know, my sweet. But that is not to be."

Julian groaned. "I know Leeta is interested. But how can I do this to her? How can I make her think she's important to me like that, and live with myself?"

"You're a clever man, Doctor Bashir," Garak said, a bit archly. "You will think of something." He squeezed Julian's ass to emphasize his point.

"That's not where the thinking happens," Julian said, giggling.

"Oh? Are you quite sure?"

"As the medical expert here, _yes._ "

* * *

"What did you tell her?"

"I told her I didn't expect it to last, or become serious. I told her I couldn't give her exclusivity, or even disclosure, but that I did promise to keep myself in good health." He chuckled. "I basically implied that I was _incredibly_ promiscuous, but that I didn't kiss and tell."

"Oh? So the rumors are true?"

Julian scoffed. "Everyone will believe they are. Just because I like to flirt!"

"No," Garak disagreed. "Because you like to flirt _badly._ "

Julian gave him a mock-wounded look.

"You're better at the Cardassian style," Garak admitted. "There, you have at least some subtlety."

* * *

"Are you really sleeping with Ziyal?" Julian asked him, months later, pushing himself up on his elbows to look Garak in the face.

Garak gave a fond sigh and stroked Julian's cheek. "No, my dear. She knows it's a farce as well as I do. She doesn't know about you, although she may suspect, but I think she's just as likely to believe that I am completely uninterested in that kind of companionship. It does happen, even among Cardassians."

"Is it hypocritical of me to be relieved?" Julian asked, going back to leaning half over Garak like some kind of heavy, slightly sweaty heated blanket.

"A little," Garak said with a smile. "But really, Julian, I wouldn't have you any other way. You provide us quite sufficient cover, and yet I know you're still invested in us."

"You love her, though," Julian pondered.

"Of course I do," Garak replied. "I consider you both family. No matter how appearances might differ from reality, in both cases, that will always be true."

Julian frowned. "Aren't you putting her in danger, the way you were afraid of doing for me?"

"It's possible," Garak replied, "but in her case I do believe the benefits outweigh the risks. Ziyal is protected from many of my old enemies by her association with Dukat. There are others for whom that association will only increase the danger, but I doubt my involvement will make that danger much worse. And of course, the simple fact of her ancestry is the thing that puts her in the greatest peril, and I can't do anything to change that." He inclined his head. "Except to spend as much time as possible around her, and watch her back, to the best of my ability."

Julian sighed. "All right," he said. "I'll try not to let jealousy overwhelm me every time she gets to touch your hand in public."

"You've got your Leeta," Garak reminded him.

"Yes, but I think she's going to break things off soon. I think she has her eye on someone else. And she deserves someone else, you know. Someone who can make her their whole world."

Garak scoffed. "The human concept of romance continues to elude me."

"You know what I mean," Julian said, then rolled over far enough to kiss Garak's temple. "I know you know what I mean."

Garak sighed, and let that statement stand.

* * *

And then Garak tried to kill all the Changelings in the Great Link.

The look in the good doctor's eyes as Garak was led to his cell had too many things in it to read, and there was some bewilderment, some disgust, enough that Garak could not be sure the remaining affection would carry them through this. But then Julian gave him a copy of The Game to read while under Odo's watchful eye, and Garak knew he still had a chance, most certainly more of a chance than he deserved.

In this book, Holmes played the part of a traveling entertainer with a hint of menace, which made Garak laugh when he found it, and for the time he was reading, at least, the walls of his cell stopped threatening to close in on him. He saved it up, wanting to make it last.

Julian visited three times a week, like clockwork. Garak was glad they'd established those boundaries long since, because he was lonely, but anything more would have been suspicious. They talked about the other books Julian had given him, mostly, but they allowed themselves to use the characters of The Game to discuss cruelty and retribution, imprisonment and varying senses of honor.

"You're just the type to do an idiotic thing like pig-sticking to try and get me out of here," Garak said at one point. "Please don't. I'll be out soon enough."

Bashir gave a little shake of his head which meant _not soon enough_ , but he didn't try anything, so that was okay.

* * *

They spent the night together as soon as Garak was released. The mood between them was somewhat stilted, partly because of the time apart, partly because of the reason for it. Then, before the week was out, Julian left for a medical conference somewhere or other.

Garak focused on reopening the shop.

When the doctor returned, things were less stilted in some ways, which was a relief at first. But then the first week passed, and Julian never invited Garak to his quarters, or invited himself to Garak's.

Something was different. They never shared those looks, those secrets. Julian hardly mentioned Holmes or Russell.

The longer it lasted, the more strongly Garak felt that something was wrong. Not just Julian drawing away from him. There would have been other signs, if Julian wanted to stop seeing him.

By two weeks, Garak had determined the most likely scenario was the dreadful possibility the doctor had been replaced by a Changeling. But what could he do, if Starfleet had been infiltrated? He could only keep an eye out. Place himself so that when an opportunity came, he could act.

* * *

By the time the real Julian was found and rescued, he knew so many more of Garak's secrets. Secrets of his parentage, his childhood, his weaknesses. It was almost too much for the paranoia-steeped former Obsidian Order agent, but he knew enough of Julian now to be reassured that the doctor would never willingly use those secrets against him.

That night, Julian stopped by the shop to give him Locked Rooms. The handing over of a Russell mystery always had a certain amount of ceremony between them, but now, that ceremony felt more weighty than ever. It was proof that they were both themselves, that they were both still here.

Garak decided to return to his quarters to read, rather than seeking out Julian himself. At this point, the books almost felt like more of a solid connection than Julian's physical form, anyway.

He ended up glad that he had.

This was the first book to have passages from Holmes's perspective, as well as Russell's. There were times she hadn't really been there, things she hadn't been able to perceive, that were important.

 _He walked into the bath-room and shook tooth-powder onto his brush, but even with the noise of the running tap and the brush, he could hear the words spilling out of the next room. Drugged, drunk, hysterical, or simply infected by the mood of a flock of partying flappers, he couldn't know, but it was tiresome and it was worrying and it was not Russell, not at all._

Yes, Garak had gotten to know that sense of loneliness where there should be no loneliness, that sense that his beloved was, to all appearances, right beside him, and yet they were not. Not at all.

Garak clung tight to the PADD as if it were Julian's hand, and read on.

* * *

A few days later, Julian came by his quarters in the evening, an almost desperate look in his eyes.

"My dear doctor," Garak said, "not that I'm not pleased to see you, but with your parents on the station, shouldn't you be taking the opportunity to spend time with them?"

"I needed to talk to you," Julian said, and reached for the sound jammer, turning it on and putting it on the table, instead of at the head of the bed, where it usually sat.

"Ah," Garak said. He sat, inviting the doctor to do the same with a gesture.

Julian sat for a minute, having trouble finding the words. "How are you getting on with Locked Rooms?" he asked at last.

"Almost finished Book Two," Garak reported, and wondered if he was about to lose everything that this man had become to him. "I appreciate the perspective of Holmes in this case."

Julian reached out and took Garak's hand, and Garak knew then that whatever might be about to separate them, it wasn't any lack of regard on Julian's part.

That was a little bit comforting, but mostly terrifying.

Julian looked him in the eye. "There are so many reasons I've wanted to share these stories with you," he said. "This one especially. There are things about my past I've never told anyone. I had reasons of my own to agree to secrecy between us. I'm always careful not to attract too much attention, and _we_ would have been too much. But it's all unraveling now. I couldn't avoid it forever."

Garak held tight to his hand, and tried to think of what might be happening to prompt this.

"Her story is nothing like mine," Julian continued, "when you get right down to it. But I always thought it would feel like that, the way she describes it, for someone else to know. Like being unpeeled."

"My darling," Garak said, "you know I won't judge."

"When I was six," Julian said, "I was genetically enhanced. When I was fifteen, I found out. I still applied to medical school, and to Starfleet. Totally illegally. But it was what I felt I'd been meant to do."

"And you've been found out? Are you certain?"

Julian nodded. "I think the best thing for it is to resign from Starfleet, first thing in the morning," he said. "Garak... if I had to leave the station, would you come?"

Garak took a breath, trying to think rationally. "You know I would love to," he told Julian. "But we need to think this through. What is the safest place for you? Would my being there put you in danger? Would it be a situation that both of us could endure? If you have time to prepare, and knowing the mercy of the Federation, you will, you should prepare carefully."

There was so much potential good, and so much potential harm, in any possibility he could think of.

"Okay," Julian said, making himself take a breath. "Okay. I'll wait and see how things play out."

"In the meantime," said Garak, "now that you're here, will you stay the night?"

"Of course," said Julian. "If this is my last night on the station, there's nowhere else I'd rather spend it."

"And if it isn't?" Garak asked.

"That wouldn't change a thing."

* * *

In the end, Julian was allowed to continue as he had been, but without one of his two largest burdens of secrecy. Garak clung tight to him. They both knew they could survive with this status quo, but that it was more precarious than ever.

In their little circle of quiet, Julian spoke freely about how he felt about what had been done to him as a child, and why he resented his parents so much for all of it. It did look like someone being unpeeled. Garak had been an interrogator, but this was an act of trust, something he didn't deserve - someone interrogating themselves, taking themselves apart in his presence, all of their own volition.

And outside the circle, they still had their codes. Garak finished Locked Rooms, picking out pieces that felt like how Julian had looked when he spoke of the poor dead child who had been Jules. When he spoke of keeping his parents' terrible secret.

 _I had habitually walked past my own history, freely displaying the rest of the house to all and sundry... My entire childhood had become a self-inflicted blind spot..._

But the language that stuck, when they spoke of recovering and moving on, was the language of gardening, all the green and growing things that had come up in the course of the book.

Garak spoke of Julian by reminiscing about his orchids on Romulus, feared by some for their potential danger but prized by Garak for their unique beauty and vitality.

Julian's public personality changed, little by little, as he got more comfortable revealing the extent of his abilities. But who he was with Garak didn't shift in the same way.

He'd never pretended to be less than he was, not in their little circle of secrets. He'd never pretended to be safe and tame and simple.

He'd held nothing back from who they were to each other inside the locked rooms they shared.


	5. Bee Space

**Bee Space**

Bees must be given space measuring exactly between 1/4 and 3/8 inch, to prevent them from closing themselves off.

* * *

 _Had the child pulled out a revolver and fired it at me, he could have silenced me no more effectively._

Sherlock Holmes, _Beekeeping for Beginners,_ Laurie R. King

* * *

Empok Nor was a slow, terrible slide back into the worst of Garak's mindset as an agent of the Obsidian Order.

Fighting a war was one thing. Hunting and destroying the innocent was another.

* * *

When Garak woke up on his return from Empok Nor, the first thing he saw was his dear doctor. He fought the urge to scramble away.

Elim Garak's hands had not been clean in many, many years, but it had also been a long time since they'd felt this bloody. Doctor Bashir was many things, with his own darkness and his own secrets, but he kept his doctor's oath. That was what defined Julian, as Cardassia defined Garak.

Hands so bloody had no place near the good doctor, who stood there, all professional concern, telling Garak what he'd been exposed to and all the doctor had done to help him recover.

Empok Nor had changed things. Not in any real way, Garak supposed, but in the way Garak himself saw them. Julian could immediately see something had changed, Garak knew, from his tiny frowns at certain moments, from the way he moved a little more carefully around Garak at certain moments.

There were many long moments of unspoken things that passed between them while Garak was in the Infirmary, while Bashir made sure his brain chemistry stabilized.

The doctor was always patient. Garak could see that in his eyes now. He would wait as long as it took for Garak to be ready to reach out to him again. When Garak thought about that, he doubted he ever would be.

He could always be wrong. The blood on his hands was nothing new, after all. Elim Garak was a dangerous man. Julian was simply very good at making him forget.

* * *

"Lunch tomorrow?" Julian asked as he discharged Garak from his care.

Garak shook his head, careful not to let any of his real reasons show. "I'm afraid I have a great deal to catch up on," he said. "Another time, perhaps?"

Julian frowned, but nodded. "Shall I come by tonight to check on you?" he asked, meaning several other things at the same time.

"No, no, I'm sure I'll be fine." Garak waved away his concern.

* * *

Garak managed to evade him more or less naturally for about a week, before the doctor conspired with Ziyal to catch him on the way out of the holosuites. Garak threw her a betrayed look before, frankly, fleeing.

Julian, of course, gave chase. "Come here. Come here, Garak!" His voice held exasperation, worry, and fondness. "I have something I want you to read."

Garak didn't want to refuse that, but if he was right about what kind of story Julian was offering, it would really be best if he did. He turned to face Julian as he got in the turbolift. "Doctor," he said. "I really don't have time right now to indulge your literary whims."

"It's just a short story," Julian said, eyes pleading. "It shouldn't take you more than an hour or two. If you don't have an hour or two to spare, then, as your doctor, I'd definitely prescribe rest."

Garak eyed the doctor. He sighed. "I suppose I might be able to find a quiet hour or two," he said, and held out a hand. "Although I can't make any promises."

Julian grinned broadly as he dropped the rod into Garak's waiting hand. "I know," he said.

* * *

Beekeeping for Beginners was clearly a plea to stay close, from the very first line.

 _Any reasonable man may reach a point in his life where self-destruction becomes a door worthy of consideration. A point at which it seems that the least a walking anachronism can do for the world is to remove himself from cluttering the landscape._

Holmes, before he'd met Russell, was in exile. Confined.

 _To a soul-grinding boredom and a pervading sense of uselessness._

Itching to find some way to be useful, to get his hand back in the game of spies. Watson could see it, and despaired.

 _"I can't say that I've been much of a friend this winter. I've only managed to get down here a handful of times, and my visits never seem to distract him much."_

Here Garak suspected that Julian would be tempted to cast himself as Watson and Ziyal as Russell, the young girl who was now occupying the detective's time. Or... perhas Julian was asking a question. _Is it her? Is that why we're drifting apart?_

No. No one could replace Julian. And he was smart enough to know that. Perhaps it was simply despair that he couldn't do anything more for Garak.

Julian had to know that it wasn't for Garak's own sake that he was staying away. But maybe he needed reminding.

A plea for a reminder, then.

The story moved on, back to Holmes and his memories of teaching Russell beekeeping.

 _"But, you're going to take a queen who's happily doing her job, and just... kill her?"_

 _"Rule Two of beekeeping: One must be cruel, only to be kind."_

 _"Hamlet. Act three. You must be their scourge and minister."_

 _"Precisely."_

The man taught her about not just literature and beekeeping, but through them cruelty for a greater purpose. Julian wasn't blind to those parts of him. Julian had known, had seen, from the beginning.

It started in little things, like culling a queen honeybee, or pruning back the branches of a fruit tree. But the larger acts of ruthlessness were there to see in the smaller ones, as the story soon demonstrated.

Holmes kept secrets. Holmes did what was necessary. Holmes kept Russell alive.

The message lacked subtlety, but then Garak suspected that it was meant to be heard shouted. _Don't go, don't go, don't go! I know what you are. You know so much more than me, smart as I am. I need you, even if I resent it sometimes._

Garak sighed. Julian was not going to give up. And Garak did love him for it.

* * *

Garak stood in the doorway of Julian's quarters, hands folded behind his back. "May I come in, Doctor?" he asked.

"Of course," Julian said, stepping aside immediately.

Garak was silent as he went to turn on the sound jammer, and then he just stood, looking at Julian.

"Are you all right?" Julian asked quietly. "Well," he corrected, "as much as you ever are?"

"No," Garak admitted. "I've been... troubled."

"That's not at all surprising," Julian said. "After what happened, anyone would be."

"Ah, but I am not just 'anyone', my dear doctor, am I?" Garak asked. "I did nothing on Empok Nor I hadn't done a thousand times before."

"But that was before," Julian murmured, approaching slowly. "You've changed. And you didn't want to do this. Every other time, I'm guessing you had choices. Maybe not good ones, but they were there. You might make the same choices now, you might not. If you'd had the choice, you wouldn't have done this."

"I'll never understand how you can have such faith in me," Garak said, nearly whispering.

"Because I know you," Julian said, firm and confident.

Garak looked away. "I couldn't think about touching you, I could hardly bear to see you, with those hands and those eyes that came back from Empok Nor."

"So you weren't going to push me away forever?" Julian shook his head. "You could have told me you needed time."

"I meant it to be forever," Garak said. "I always do. But someone keeps pulling me back."

Julian smiled ruefully. "Is that so? And who might that be?"

"I'm so very lucky," Garak told him, "to know someone whose stubbornness is a match for my own."

"Is it too much?" Julian asked, far too gently. "Do you really wish you could fade away, perhaps start over somewhere else?"

Garak shook his head. "My darling, I may encourage you to doubt anything and everything you might think you know about me. I still do. But if you must believe anything, believe this. You are my family, my love, and in my heart second only to Cardassia itself."

"'Doubt thou the stars are fire'?" Julian asked, and the corner of his mouth turned up.

"Don't quote that tripe to me," Garak growled.

"You like Shakespeare," Julian insisted, still smiling teasingly even as Garak pushed him against the wall. "You can admit it, you know."

"Never," Garak said, and pressed in to kiss Julian, holding his hands against the wall with fingers laced in between his.

* * *

Doubt thou the stars are fire,  
Doubt that the sun doth move,  
Doubt truth to be a liar,  
But never doubt I love.

\- Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2


	6. The Language of Bees

**A/N:** This spoils some elements of the mystery in The Language of Bees, but not the ending.

* * *

 **The Language of Bees**

 _A bee has no loyalty to the keeper, only to the hive; no commitment to the place, only to the community._

Excerpt from _Practical Handbook of Bee Culture_ by Sherlock Holmes, _The Language of Bees,_ Laurie R. King

* * *

"Do you think," Julian said, while exploring Garak's hands distractingly with his own, "we could tell some people about us? Not everyone, just maybe a couple of people?"

Garak replied only with a suppressing look through narrowed eyes.

"Oh, come on, Garak! You said it yourself, Ziyal all but knows. You don't have to be quite as on your guard around her. But I've got no one else I can really talk to about how things are going with you."

"I never let down my guard," Garak said. "Except here, with the jammer on."

"But why?" Julian asked. "My reason for keeping us secret is gone. I've been found out as an Augment. There's no more threat from too much attention there. We're at war with Cardassia, so any Cardassian that gets through the front lines is a relatively equal danger to anyone on the station. And Enabran Tain is dead. Even if there's someone of the Order's caliber who's still interested in you, are they really going to bother with me in particular, at a time like this?" Julian made one of his pleading, slightly pouty faces. "Could we at least reconsider our secrecy policy?"

Garak heaved a sigh. "I'll think about it."

* * *

Aboard the Defiant, they had even less privacy than usual available to them. Garak contented himself with cornering the good doctor in the medical supply room and flirting even more outrageously than usual. This meant irritability and insults which were, by human standards, overly harsh.

Bashir played ignorance very well, not exactly flirting back, but at least maintaining his usual level of banter. Though he did look tired, and Garak expressed his concern the only way that made sense right now: insulting his appearance, to boot.

Still, they got through the mission without even being tempted to give things away. They were both far too busy, Garak plotting and tricking and occasionally killing, and the doctor forging bonds and saving lives.

Things could go on just fine the way they were.

But maybe Julian was right. Maybe they could be better.

* * *

Then Garak got back from his second mission with the Defiant, and Ziyal wasn't waiting for him.

He had a very, very bad feeling about that.

People who attached themselves to him just ended up in trouble over it, one way or another. The body was a shock, but perhaps not a surprise.

Doctor Bashir came in at one point during the endless frozen time Garak spent trying to figure out how to say goodbye to someone who wasn't there anymore. The doctor didn't speak, just reached out and squeezed Garak's shoulder, low enough not to be scandalous, hard enough that Garak could feel the emotion in it. It was a simple message that he was there, that he wouldn't interrupt but that he was nearby if he was needed.

Garak wasn't even sure how long he'd spent there, or at what point Bashir dragged him away by the elbow to Garak's own quarters, the only place on the station even vaguely warm enough at the best of times, and now not nearly warm enough to hold back the chill.

The doctor didn't try to engage him in conversation for a good three days after that, but then he broke the rule and let himself into Garak's quarters for the second time in a week.

"We're not abandoning our agreement," Garak told him, glaring.

"Garak, you're not even vaguely all right right now, and everyone knows it. What would people think of me if I _didn't_ push my way into your quarters right now?"

Bashir had a point.

"I understand you feeling vulnerable at the moment," Julian continued, "so I won't push too hard. I just want to make sure you're eating, and offer a distraction if you need it."

"I don't want a distraction. I can't afford to be distracted."

"Oh, yes, because you're so on the ball right now," the doctor drawled, his voice a blend of gentle mocking, fondness, and concern.

Garak turned to look at him, raising his brow ridges.

The doctor brought out an isolinear rod, raising his eyebrows in return.

Resigned to the inevitability of these exchanges by now, Garak sighed, and gestured to the table. Julian put it down there willingly enough.

It would be another two days before Garak picked it up, but just its presence there, a visible sign of Julian's support, was grounding.

* * *

The Language of Bees was a slow and contemplative read at first, full of darkness and mystery, symbolism and obsession and grief. It spoke of the surreality of life and the importance of art.

It hurt to read. Garak wanted to resent Bashir for giving him this book. Especially when Holmes came to see the body.

There was so often a body or three in these stories, but this time it was different. This time it wasn't simply a puzzle around which the characters danced.

The body of a young woman who was out of place in the culture in which she found herself. A young woman who had been vital and intelligent and generous. A young woman Holmes considered family.

Garak read on, not knowing how much of what motivated him was determination and how much was that kind of horror that made it impossible to look away.

Holmes was businesslike about it, until he wasn't.

 _The expression that hardened his features and turned his eyes to flame was one I had rarely seen there._

 _Rage, pure and hot._

It was surreal the way Julian seemed to see him better than he saw himself, every now and again. How the books kept highlighting aspects of their lives that cut right to the heart. Garak almost suspected that the King woman was an elaborate con, and that Julian himself was writing these books as they were needed. But he wouldn't have had the time - not even an Augment.

As the days passed from that fixed point of Ziyal's last breath, Garak became hard and determined in a way he hadn't realized he wasn't before.

The book hurt to read, but it helped to have it, and to know that Julian had read the same words and connected them with what Garak must be feeling now.

* * *

Garak knew he would do what he had to to win this war and free Cardassia. Garak knew some of his decisions would be ugly. But Garak also knew that Julian, the only real familial connection that remained to him, understood as well as anyone could that the ugliness was a necessary part of who Garak was, and what his life had made him.

So when Julian had come to him, distracted, concerned about Captain Sisko and the biomemetic gel, Garak knew the doctor would understand when he explained that it had been one of those hard decisions. A sacrifice for the greater good of winning the war.

Julian didn't like it, but he still held Garak close in the bubble of privacy created by their sound jammer, and that was enough.

"Do you think I should hold off on the official protest?" Julian asked in the darkness.

"No," Garak replied. "It would be wildly out of character for you." He kissed Julian softly on the lips. "You are all righteous anger for the cause of justice and medical ethics, and I wouldn't have you any other way."

Julian sighed, a not entirely contented sound.

"This won't be the last time one of us has to make a hard decision about where our priorities lie," Garak warned him. "This is going to be a long and difficult war."

Julian scratched softly at the tough scales underneath Garak's shoulder blade as he answered. "I know," he said. "And I don't like it. But I can live with it."

Garak smiled. "That's the important thing," he agreed. "It's less important whether you can still live with _me,_ when all this is said and done."

"But still important," Julian said. "I believe we'll get through this."

Garak huffed. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves," he warned.

Julian just hummed contemplatively, and cuddled Garak closer to his chest.

* * *

Julian also investigated other ways for Garak to be of use to the war effort, and that was how Garak ended up decoding the messages that Starfleet intercepted from Central Command.

But the longer that went on, the less able Garak found himself to live with Julian - or anyone else in Starfleet green - or himself. Every time he went to work on the codes, it got worse. It was as if his own body was trying to do him in. Julian had to come and save him, but after a certain point, all the doctor could do was look on helplessly and hope that the incredibly aggravating new incarnation of Dax would somehow discover a magical cure.

There were no magical cures. There was the control of mind over matter, and the failure to do so.

Garak shook his head, and tried not to think of Russell in her precarious cavern.

 _It would be an irony if I had survived numerous opportunities to plummet from the sky only to be squashed by a boulder._

It would be an irony for Garak to survive all that he had survived, only to be sabotaged by his own body and mind.

* * *

And still Ezri Dax pushed him.

She pushed him until he yelled. She ran away crying, but she came back, and kept pushing. She pushed until she got him to admit in so many words that he believed every message he decoded was going to kill more Cardassians than it saved.

It hurt, and it helped. Like the books. Being seen, and seeing oneself. One's mind could not grapple with the truth if one refused to see it.

How like Julian this new Dax was. So young, so deceptively clumsy, like a baby deer. But under that, so much intelligence, and enough stubbornness that wild horses couldn't drag them from the goals they truly clung to.

It didn't make things easy, or even simple. But it helped. So Garak kept cracking the codes that would send his fellow Cardassians, all unknowing, to their deaths.

In between, Garak found himself staring out at the stars, wondering how it would all end, part of him wanting to just get there already. But the future rarely decided to arrange itself in ways that were to Garak's liking.

He could save the dreams of others, save their futures, but he feared his own wishes were now beyond the realm of the possible.

* * *

Julian, of course, noticed how very absent he'd become. They were lucky to share a meal twice in a month, these days. But Julian always tracked him down for some kind of time spent together, even if it was just to curl up against Garak's side as he decoded messages, or sewed, or slept.

"I miss you," the doctor said, one night. "You're here, and I miss you."

Garak just sighed, and didn't look away from his PADD. After a moment, he said, "I am not the easiest person to love."

"No one is, Elim." Julian's fingers traced the ridges on his chest in idle silence, not uncomfortable, but having its own kind of weight.

Garak let his hand come to rest in Julian's hair, and he thought about futures that might still be. He looked at the doctor, then, making a choice.

"I'd like to give you permission, not just to date other people, but to fall in love with them," he said.

"Why?" Julian asked, head coming up, inadvertently pushing into Elim's hand. "Why now?"

Garak brought his hand down to rest against the side of Julian's face. "I haven't stopped loving you," he said. "But if we win this war, I must do whatever I can to help Cardassia, and I will have no more time for you than I do now. And if we lose, I will become a shadow."

Julian covered Garak's hand with his own warm one. "What if I want to be a shadow with you?" he asked.

"You don't. You're far too brightly shining for that kind of life."

"Well, then, we'll have to make sure we win. And I'll help Cardassia with you."

Garak shook his head. "You don't know what you're offering."

"No I don't. Neither of us knows what the galaxy is going to look like after this war. So let's not get ahead of ourselves."

"I'm not, my dear. I simply wish you to know that you have permission to build yourself a life outside of the little I have to offer right now, and most likely in the future."

Julian responded only with a thoughtful hum.

"You miss me," Garak reminded him. "I can't change that, but perhaps I can make it more bearable."

"No." Julian collapsed dramatically across Garak's chest. "Nope. I shall pine over you forever. There's no hope for me. I'm lost to you, Garak." He twisted, just enough so he could look Garak in the eye. "Elim. I really am."

"We'll see." Garak kissed his dear doctor's cheek. "I was right about Leeta. I think I'm right about this. You see, Julian, I know you, too."

Julian's face looked... like perhaps that hurt, but maybe it helped, too. And Garak thought that even if he himself didn't get a happy ending, he could stand to live in a world where at least Julian Bashir got one.

Garak sighed, and finally put down the PADD he'd been holding. "Come here," he said. "And pull the blankets back up, your dramatics are letting in a draft."

For the moment, he let himself think of a better ending. For a moment, he let himself think of Holmes and Russell.

 _Hunched together, shoulder to shoulder, we waited for Ragnarok, the end of the world._


	7. Belief in Many Impossible Things

**A/N:** So this includes a good amount of dialogue from the series finale, and also quotes and medium-sized spoilers from The God of the Hive by Laurie R. King.

It's partially inspired by the book A Stitch in Time by Andrew J. Robinson, the actor of Garak, which I read recently. There are incompatibilities between that narrative and this series, but there are also inconsistencies between the book and the show, so basically I'm taking the whole book, like everything Garak says, with a huge grain of salt. He takes creative liberties and uses lies to tell the truth.

I also reference a couple of TNG episodes and Ender's Game.

* * *

 **Belief in Many Impossible Things**

 _"A lady physician might be inclined towards belief in many impossible things."_

\- Sherlock Holmes, _The God of the Hive,_ Laurie R. King

* * *

"I don't know if you've heard," Garak said conversationally, "but I'm going to Cardassia with Major Kira. They've asked me to act as her guide."

"Oh," said Julian, eyes wide. He reached for Garak, almost blindly, as if seeking any contact he could get. He ended up with one hand on Garak's chest and another curled around his upper arm. "I suppose you're glad to be going back in any capacity you can, but please, Elim, be careful."

"A permanent state of affairs, Doctor, I assure you," Garak said lightly.

"Of course," Julian said, nodding. "But I'll still worry. If I'm going to keep myself from giving us away, not to mention keeping myself sane, I've got to keep myself distracted."

"I'm sure the young Lieutenant Dax would be willing to help in that regard," Garak suggested gently.

"No," Julian said with a sigh, "she's been avoiding me. I don't think she wants me to know she and Worf are getting back together." He frowned thoughtfully. "You know, I think it's time I started on the organ regeneration project I've been playing with. That ought to keep me occupied."

"If it's that absorbing," Garak asked, "why haven't you started work on it already?"

"Because," Julian answered, "it requires me to do some rather invasive tests on Odo."

"Actually," Garak told him, "I believe Odo's coming to Cardassia too."

Julian blinked as he processed that, and then slumped. "Drat."

"You could always ask to borrow some Changeling," Garak suggested with a shrug.

"What, just say 'terribly sorry to bother you, Odo, but can I borrow a cup of goo'?"

"Well," Garak said, "can you think of an approach that would work better on Odo?"

"Perhaps not," Julian agreed.

They both lapsed into silence for a minute.

"Are you going to stay on Cardassia?" Julian asked at last.

Garak could only give one answer. "If they'll have me, yes."

Julian's fingers traced the scales on the outside of Garak's elbow. Then he drew himself up, looking Garak in the eye.

"I can't believe this is the end," he said. "I won't. If you stay, I can find a way to join you."

Garak patted the doctor's other hand where it still rested on his chest. "I'm sorry to say that the rare few who may welcome me will still most likely not welcome you."

"I don't care."

Garak sighed. "Don't make any hasty decisions. You belong in Starfleet." He read the angry look on Julian's face. The man rebelled at limitations. "You don't belong on Cardassia," he corrected.

"How do you know?" Julian asked.

"I do have hope for you, Doctor," Garak said, "but until you can read The Neverending Sacrifice and have it touch you the way the rare piece of Earth literature touches me, you won't survive there."

Misery bloomed on Julian's face. "I don't know how well I'll survive here without you." He lowered his head until his hair brushed Garak's scales. "God, I feel like I'm being ripped in half."

Garak hummed sympathetically, knowing the feeling all too well, but his reply was uncompromising. "Promise me you'll give your life here another chance. Read Federation books with Federation friends. Do brilliant medical research. Be Doctor Julian Bashir, healer of all species that visit Deep Space Nine. The man you're meant to be. The man I fell in love with. I couldn't bear it if he ceased to exist."

Julian sighed, one of Garak's hands in both of his, clearly contemplating that. He looked sideways at Garak's face for a moment.

"If I am going to build a life with someone," he said, "I'll need to be honest with them. Eventually. About you. You're too big a part of my life for anything else."

Garak thought. It was Julian's fate at stake, and Julian's responsibility to keep himself alive, if they were going their separate ways. The best way Garak could think of to reduce the risks to Julian was to let him have what he needed to make a relationship with someone else work.

The doctor would choose his confidante well. The things they'd been doing were hardly about to become common knowledge.

Garak's chest creaked with pain as he took a breath to answer, to give Julian a way out of their safe, comfortable circle of secrecy. "I understand."

* * *

The war raged, and fire rained down out of the sky, and death was everywhere.

The war ended, but at what cost to Cardassia?

Julian came to say goodbye. They had no chance for privacy, but Garak didn't know if he could stand the force of unfiltered Julian Bashir at the moment, anyway. The doctor did his level Federation best to be comforting, but comfort wasn't something Garak could accept right now.

"Cardassia will survive," Julian insisted.

"Please, Doctor. Spare me your insufferable Federation optimism. Of course it will survive, but as not the Cardassia I knew. We had a rich and ancient culture. Our literature, music, art were second to none. And now, so much of it is lost. So many of our best people, our most gifted minds." He pushed, because he knew if any non-Cardassian could understand how he felt right now, it would be Julian.

"I'm sorry, Garak. I didn't mean..." There were so many things that Julian put into his expression, then, so much he left unsaid because they weren't in the little bubble where words could flow freely, but Garak thought he knew what his Julian would have said.

"Oh, it's quite all right, Doctor," he said. "You've been such a good friend. I'm going to miss our lunches together." There was so much more than that he would miss, and they both knew it.

The doctor spoke with determination. "I'm sure we'll see each other again."

"I'd like to think so, but one can never say. We live in uncertain times." Garak squeezed his shoulder, hard, a goodbye full of affection and good will, and left.

Julian turned and went after him, but only long enough to press one of those now usual but still remarkable isolinear rods into his hand.

It was a quick and subtle way of saying that this particular struggle wasn't over.

Garak curled his fingers around the rod, and thought ruefully that he really should have known his doctor better than to think it was.

* * *

It was weeks before Garak had the kind of leisure that meant he could focus on a book.

The one Julian had given him this time was called The God of the Hive, and it started in a flurry of activity that followed the fallout of the adventure in the previous book. There was a lot of fleeing, and a lot of secrecy, and a lot of injuries that needed medical attention but that couldn't be tended to openly.

Frankly, it reminded Garak far too much of how he'd been spending his own days. But in another way, it was good to be able to feel the resulting emotions while he was safe in his shack, and not while he was searching precarious ruins for survivors or bodies and he had to have his wits about him so as not to be crushed by a further collapse.

Then Holmes found a doctor for his current companion, a fiery, defiant, unusual sort of doctor for the time and place.

 _"Yes," she said tiredly, "I'm a girl, but yes, I'm a qualified doctor, and no, my cousin won't return for two weeks or more, so unless you want to take your problem to Golspie or Inverness, I'm your man."_

His first reaction was to think of Dr. Parmak, defending his choice to enter the medical profession despite his gender just as insistently, just as tiredly.

But then he couldn't help but picture Julian, fighting to be allowed to help people on Cardassia, fighting people's perceptions of both his gender and his species.

He would do it. He would make Cardassia accept him, and he'd shine like the stars in his fury if anyone tried to stop him. Garak didn't know why he hadn't been able to see it before.

But then, that had been months ago. The Cardassia that existed today was too weak to crush Bashir for the attempt.

* * *

Through a good three-quarters of the book, Holmes and Russell were separated, in the midst of their own adventures, only knowing that the other was alive and well when they read each other's coded messages.

 _BEEKEEPING is enjoyed by thousands, a reliable and safe hobby, practiced on week-ends alone from Oxford Street to Regent's Park._

And:

 _BEES may thrive in foreign lands yet, lacking protection, meet peril close to home on Saturday._

As long as they knew the other was safe, they could act with confidence, almost as one. Even separated by a stretch of choppy sea and the prying eyes of powerful enemies.

They both found new acquaintances to help them on their separate journeys, but they both gravitated in towards home, towards family, towards each other.

Garak saw the message in that, and yet he told himself firmly that there was still time for Julian to escape the tragedy that was having Cardassia as a home, and feeling all that the Dominion had done to the world like black, rotting marks on his heart.

But then, Russell's London had been decimated by war, buildings leveled and a generation of soldiers sent out, never to return. She had other places she could call home - she'd lived in Boston, and in California, and in other places that were not the capital of the British Empire. She'd had other directions she could have gone with her life. And still, London and Holmes kept calling her back.

Julian had grown up in London, and Garak wondered if even now, four centuries later, the inhabitants of that city still carried some of the scars around with them on their hearts.

They must, even just a little, if Julian still came back to these books over and over again, and still chose them over so many other stories of so many other eras.

Holmes and Russell met again, in London, after a funeral (and for a moment the description of that occasion reminded Garak vividly of a story that had been relayed via Julian's synthetic pen pal aboard the Enterprise), and the two of them were again immediately as they always had been.

Flirting outrageously, and wildly in love, but never too distracted to manage the task at hand.

 _He commented on the effectiveness of the disguise, examined me for sign of injuries, berated me for driving away our foes before they could reveal their leader, and chided me for reducing the obsequies to a shambles - all of which were his way of expressing his pleasure in seeing me._

They worked, despite all their differences, despite everything standing in their way.

Garak dared to hope that what he and Julian had really wasn't over. But there was so much to do. To build a new Cardassia. Not just the infrastructure that would keep the people alive, Garak was already doing everything he could to those ends, but the culture, the art, every part of what Cardassia had been needed to be rebuilt.

If Garak was to be a part of that, he had a lot of work to do, yes, but he also had many decisions to make.

Garak loved so much of the literature that had brought them as a species here, to this point, but in the end it had failed them. To rebuild, to make something that might work for Cardassia going forward, they would need a new kind of literature.

He didn't know if he was really the man for the job. He put pen to paper, but every time he tried, he could only think of all the things he wanted to tell Julian.

Was that so bad?

Julian had written to him, several times. The secret was kept, the missives only hinting here and there that something beyond friendship drove their connection.

Whenever Garak sat down to write back, he was struck by the feeling that there was more to do here, that Cardassia needed his labor before he could indulge himself this way.

But what was the goal? What direction should he be pushing? Garak thought of the Cardassia that could be, rather than the one that had been, or the one that now struggled to keep breathing through its injury.

If Cardassia was going to be different, could it become a place where a man like Doctor Julian Bashir would be welcome?

Could he do both at the same time? Weave a story of Cardassia that held everything he wished Julian could know about the place Elim called home?

He took old fragments of journal entries and stitched them together with aborted fragments of letters, pieced them together into a cohesive form as he might do with scraps of fabric to make a suit.

Elim Garak was very practiced in constructing a compelling lie.

The lies he wove drew from his own life, of course - the substance was true - but the form drew on what he knew of human literature, what they valued, what engaged them in a story.

One of the books that he and the doctor had discussed had been Ender's Game. It had struck Garak at the time as both horribly alien and horribly familiar. It had a texture as unforgiving as the stone of Cardassia, but a heart that was very much human.

He picked and chose his influences carefully, but in other ways he let the story grow the way it willed. He had been a gardener, after all, long before he had ever been a tailor.

It would tell Julian how he hurt, but that he was not alone. That things were starting to change, but that there was a very long way to go.

It would say, _this is my home. If it's your home, too, then come home._


	8. Interlude: Cardassian Literature

**A/N:** I always like turning the tables, and so Garak must send personal messages to Bashir using pieces of Cardassian literature. Luckily, the one piece of literature that I know of that was written by a Cardassian and accepted into Star Trek licensed apocrypha is an overtly personal message from Garak to Bashir.

Therefore, all quotes herein are taken from A Stitch in Time, by Andrew J. Robinson.

As I've said before, I don't believe everything in the book is truth as such, but I do believe it's a story that says something true.

* * *

 **Interlude: Cardassian Literature**

 _Perhaps there's hope for us yet._

\- _A Stitch in Time_ , Elim Garak (Andrew J. Robinson)

* * *

Julian hadn't given up hope that Garak would eventually write back to him. Still, it was a shock and a joy when he checked his messages and discovered that the Cardassian had sent him an enormous text file. At first he was afraid that it was just another Cardassian repetitive epic for him to read, or rather to drown in, or at least to flail around trying to figure out how to swim in.

Well, would that be so bad, if what Garak wanted of him was to learn how to swim?

And maybe it was a Cardassian epic. But it was also a letter, written directly from Elim Garak to Julian Bashir.

Like many of the things Garak said, it was full of contradictions, pushes and pulls, mysteries and lies. He still pushed for a certain amount of distance, still insisted that Julian could go off and live his own life, but underneath that, the need for companionship rang out like a bell, clearer than ever.

 _I know that we have grown apart and that's as it should be. We learn what we can from certain people, then we move on after we've taken what we need. When we learn nothing new about ourselves in a relationship that's when the relationship is over. Or it's over the moment when we're_ afraid _to learn something new about ourselves. But what I have been learning about myself... whatever it was inside me that was sparked and challenged when I first met you... is deeply connected to this story. I'm an unfinished man, Doctor, like a suit of clothes hanging on a display rack waiting for the final touches that may never come; I need to tell this story to make a peace with those parts of me that were left unfinished. A healing._

More than anything, he'd always needed to be seen, to be witnessed, despite all the screens he put up to stop that from happening.

Julian pinched the bridge of his nose. This had to come, of course, just when Julian was becoming content with his life on the station again.

He put down the PADD. He needed a break from this. Luckily, it was almost time to meet Ezri for lunch.

* * *

Julian greeted Ezri with a quick kiss on the lips as he passed her with his lunch tray.

"Did you look up those Vulcan teaching songs I recommended?" Ezri asked him, as he was sitting down across from her.

"I'm sorry. I haven't had a chance. Garak finally wrote back." He sighed, slightly exasperated. "Well. I see now why it took so long. He wrote me a novel, more or less. I'm still making my way through it."

"I'll give you a pass this time, then. How is Garak?"

"Honestly, I'm not sure," he answered. "I'll let you know if I have a better idea once I've gotten to the end."

From there Ezri picked up the conversation, sharing news about other friends who'd left the station and what they were up to now. Then she moved on to chatting about what she'd been reading, which was either Harry Potter or Little Women, or possibly both.

Julian tried to keep up, but he found himself staring into the middle distance, at the flow of people onto the Promenade, as if expecting old friends to walk through the corridor from the docking ring.

Then Ezri put her hand over his, and said something that finally did catch his attention. "You're here with me," she said, "but you're far away."

He focused on her immediately. "I'm sorry." He frowned. "I know how that feels, and it's wretched. I shouldn't be doing that to you. I'll pay more attention."

She looked hard at him. "Sounds like you mind it more than I do," she said. "Someone's been distant with you? No, someone who's here but not here." She made a thoughtful moue. "Oh," she said, then, closing her eyes. "Oh, you miss Jadzia. When I'm here with you, it makes you miss Jadzia."

He opened his mouth to deny, but really, what could he say that would sound better? "Sometimes," he admitted.

She looked at her hands. "I'm a substitute." Then she looked up, making her statement into a question with her steady, seeking gaze.

"No! No, Ezri. You're more than that. I like you. I like Ezri Dax." He bit his lip, then frowned, finally closing his eyes to her unwavering gaze. "But yes. There are people I've had to say goodbye to, and I'm trying to fill the holes they left by spending time with you."

"People." She smirked. "Not just Jadzia?"

"I never had - _this_ \- with Jadzia. I miss her, yes, but... look. Look where we are, look what we're doing. We're having lunch. We're talking about literature. Sometimes... you know, just sometimes, I look up from my lunch and I expect to see his face looking back at me."

"We do other things too," Ezri said with a certain amount of the adolescent combination of enthusiasm and embarrassment, then she frowned at what she saw on Julian's face. "Oh my god, Julian, really? You and Garak?" She leaned towards him. "Since when?"

Well, Garak had given him permission to tell Ezri. In a way. He nodded, searching her face. Surprise was fading to something... bittersweet and fond. "You're not upset?" he asked.

"You were very up-front with me about the fact that you sometimes date more than one person at a time. I knew you had... other interests. You have so much capacity to care, Julian Bashir." She smiled, only a little sadness to it. "So tell me. When did it start? And did you leave things open, when he left?"

"Five years, nearly."

Now, she looked just a bit upset. "Five years? And you never told me?"

"He was quite insistent that we keep it a secret." He laughed, sounding hollow. "That was the only reason I dated Leeta, really. I wanted to be able to hold hands with someone on the Promenade."

Ezri peered at him, and Julian swore he could see Jadzia and the others looking out through her eyes. "Why are you still here, Julian?"

"Because..." He honestly wasn't sure how to answer.

"Because you think you owe something to Dax? Julian. I'm a different person than Jadzia, and even if you owed her anything, which you don't, debts don't transfer that way. Look, I'm... I've been picking up the practical pieces of her life because it's easier for me to do it than all of you who are still grieving for her. I had to face who I am now and what that means. I remember where she put everything and what she was planning to do with it. But when it comes to the emotional stuff, you have to treat me like a new person."

"But what I feel for you is different than what I felt for Jadzia. I know that you're different. I like that you are. I'm not still chasing her. I want you."

"Do you, though?" Ezri put a hand on his arm. "Listen, we've got chemistry. I've seen it enough times to get the different ways people are drawn to each other. This kind of chemistry is quick and bright and it feels all-consuming, but it's not. When you really fall for someone, Julian, when you fall hard, I know what that looks like. I've seen it on you through Jadzia's eyes. And I'm not seeing it now. At least, not when you're thinking about me."

Ouch. Would that hurt quite so much as it did, if it wasn't true?

Julian closed his eyes. "Funny enough, in some ways I feel like I owe it to Garak. He was always so insistent that I have an escape route, that I had a way to build a normal life for myself."

"Do you want a normal life?" Ezri asked.

He thought about that, really thought. The first thing he'd done after Garak had nudged him in the direction of building a life with someone else was throw himself at Sarina, in a way that was utterly stupid and utterly terrible for them both. Things would never have been normal with her, another Augment. Things would never be normal with Dax, either. A joined trill with so many lives behind them. Julian was always pushing the edges, going for the frontiers. Julian wanted to be the farthest he could be from where things were normal, because he never would be, and it was better to feel out of place in a place where everyone had trouble adapting.

Deep Space Nine was settling down, now, without the threats of the Dominion and the Cardassian Union pushing everything awry.

He was useful here, but it didn't _challenge_ him anymore, not like it had.

"Why am I still here?" he asked.

"You don't want to let go of the life you had here," Ezri told him. "But I think we both need to accept that it's over, and it's time to go start a new life. What do you say, Julian? Can we be friends?"

He swallowed, and took her hand. "Yes, of course. I'm sorry about this. I really thought we could build something, but I should have known it couldn't happen with half my heart gone with Garak to Cardassia. I shouldn't have put you in this position. I shouldn't have made you a substitute."

She squeezed his hand, then let go. "Listen, it's not so bad. Sometimes someone's got to be the understudy."

Julian shook his head. "You deserve to be yourself. Just yourself."

"That isn't what life had in store for me. I don't get to just be Ezri. I'm always going to be full of ghosts. I'm going to haunt some people. And I try not to think about what my life would have been without Dax, because that way lies madness, and I should know. I'm the expert. But Julian. If Jadzia was going to haunt you, she would want me to tell you to go. Don't worry about us. Go find the other half of your heart."

She looked like she was about to cry, but she also looked incredibly earnest.

"I do love you," he said.

"Don't," she pleaded. "I know, Julian, but don't."

He nodded, and got up to leave, giving her a chance to compose herself before she had to do the same.

* * *

He was going to be useless for his research for the rest of the day, while all these elements swum around in his head, recontextualizing themselves and ending up in unexpected configurations.

He'd known he was trying too hard. He'd known it was because he'd promised Garak. But, suddenly, looking at all that from Ezri's perspective, it sounded awful. He'd always been very careful not to claim to be exclusive with anyone when he wasn't, but "not exclusive" and "actively in love with someone else" suddenly seemed poles apart.

Sighing, he put aside his research and picked up the PADD with Garak's message on it. For the moment, it seemed easier than dealing with the mess he suddenly found himself in here.

Some of the most interesting parts, oddly enough, were the conversations between Garak and himself that Garak portrayed as happening while he was on the station.

It was different than the history Julian remembered, and not just because no mention was made of time spent inside their circle of silence. Things happened out of order. Conversations changed course from how Julian recalled them, or were expanded past recognition. But it still all felt true, and he wondered how Garak always managed that.

The scenes on Cardassia seemed to fill in the missing spaces in the time on the station, since they were chock full of secret meetings, of codes, of relationships being found out and people therefore being put in danger. It was steeped in Garak's caution, the walls he lived behind. But it also fought that lesson every step of the way.

 _"He's hard, Mila," Father said._

 _"He has to be," she replied._

 _"But to the point where he's unreachable?" Father asked. "Where nothing penetrates? How can he express even his basic needs if he's trapped inside a shell?"_

It explained many things, the way Garak's stories always did, lies or not.

It also felt personal. Julian wondered how much this story had been nudged and manipulated until it felt like it might have been about Julian himself. About parents who wanted him to be something in particular, and pushed him until he became that. About walls put up and secrets kept in order to survive.

Then, suddenly, from one page to the next, the drive of the story changed from simply a plea to be seen to a more overt request for help. Julian didn't think that it was a coincidence that it was the same page in which Garak gave his only mention of the Federation presence on Cardassia during the rebuilding.

It was also the point in the story where the death toll on Cardassia felt heaviest.

 _For myself, Doctor, when a corpse is too heavy to bury I try to remember to ask someone to help me._

* * *

The day after he received Garak's message, Doctor Bashir began the process of tying up loose ends on the station, ending some research projects where they stood, passing on others to colleagues who could continue the work he'd begun. He put in for immediate leave. And he requested a transfer to Cardassia.

It wasn't a hasty decision, he found himself explaining to Kira, but rather a decision a long time in the making, and one that he'd put off for far too long.

Something in Kira's eyes told him that she understood. Julian thought that if Kira had believed there was even a snowball's chance in hell of her ever learning to swim in the seas of Odo's home world, she would have been right there next to him on the next transport out.

He hadn't even read the end of the message yet. But as he waited for bureaucracy and transport schedules to catch up to his decision, he read on, and everything he read made him more sure that he was making the right choice.

Garak spoke of his love life:

 _Careful, Elim. You know perfectly well that the surest way to your heart is conversation._

He spoke of the political situation on Cardassia:

 _"You're a doctor, yes, and that's your strength. I've learned something about your profession over the past several years. Don't think like a politician. Think of the planet as a patient barely hanging on to life. Think like a doctor. How would you save this planet?_

And as if he hadn't already made things perfectly clear by the standards of their public communications, he ended the message with a clear invitation:

 _I hope that someday you'll have the opportunity to see it. Nothing would please me more. You're always welcome, Doctor._


	9. The Lone and Level Sands

**A/N:**

 **Me reading** ** _The Marriage of Mary Russell_** **for the first time for the purposes of this series:** wow the only thing about this that doesn't scream "Julian goes to Cardassia to get married to Garak and there are shenanigans" is the lush green landscape

 **Sherlock Holmes:** *quotes the last five lines of Ozymandias*

 **Me, crying:** The lone and level sands, oh my god

All quotes are from The Marriage of Mary Russell, by Laurie R. King. Kardasi language borrowed from tinsnip and Vyc's dictionary and other resources. I hope I used them at least vaguely correctly!

I went back and figured out that it's _totally plausible_ for Bashir's comm badge to have been outside the range of the sound jammer in all previous scenes. Except for the one scene in Locked Rooms where Julian must have set aside his badge at the beginning of the scene and it wasn't mentioned, either Garak conveniently barged into Julian's room after he changed into pajamas but before he went to sleep, or there's offscreen undressing before we enter the scene. The comm badge is usually on a table just out of the jammer's range. They can hear it - albeit with a bit of distortion - but it can't hear them.

* * *

 **The Lone and Level Sands**

 _For the first time that day, I relaxed: whatever lay before us, it would include emotional swordplay, and it would involve Holmes._

\- _The Marriage of Mary Russell_ , Laurie R. King

* * *

Tolan's shed was not really a shed anymore.

Garak had turned Enabran Tain's house into a memorial. But Tolan Garak's little gardening shed had become a home, and it changed and expanded as the resources became more easily available. It seemed appropriate that the place where Tain's memory rested was full of reminders of death, but in the places that had been Tolan's, there was life.

Garak's home was a living memorial to the man who had taught him how to make things grow, and taught him that there was more than one way to respect the heart of Cardassia. Every time the house grew, every time it gained a new room or better windows, every time it became a better place to live, Elim nodded in satisfaction, knowing Tolan would have approved.

Garak spent much of his free time out in front of the house, watching people roam the memorial, or working on the surrounding garden that had been Tain's by name but Tolan's in spirit. Sometimes he let himself hope he'd see, among the Cardassian faces, a smooth brown human one.

He blinked, looking up from his orchids. Had that been...

There was none of the Starfleet black, gray and teal of his uniform in the crowd, so he must have been wrong.

But then there was another flash of smooth golden skin, topped with that odd flourish of hair. It _was_ Julian! Not only was he out of uniform, but he wasn't wearing his comm badge. The doctor had spotted him now, and was walking towards him.

Garak stood up and brushed the dirt off his hands. "Doctor Julian Bashir, as I live and breathe. Welcome to my humble abode." He apologetically offered his grimy hand to clasp, which Julian did, in a way that ended up half human handshake and half _yut'pUr_.

Garak spoke to him in Federation Standard, or, more accurately, English, since that was the dialect he knew best from the human literature he'd read. That was what they'd spoken in their circle of silence, since the universal translators that were everywhere on the station couldn't listen and therefore couldn't translate.

So it was something of a shock when Julian replied in Kardasi.

 _"ka tapxik vrell,"_ Julian said. _Your house is lovely._ He grinned like he knew he'd won something.

 _"s'h'iosr'halin,"_ Garak exclaimed, thrilled to be able to speak in his own language. He continued in Kardasi, "Your accent's not terrible. Who have you been practicing with?"

Julian kept it up as well. "Random Cardassians on the shuttle over, mostly. There isn't anyone on the station anymore who's a native speaker."

Garak shook his head, leading the way to the front of his house. "Oh, now don't try and deceive me, Doctor. You've got a better grasp of the language than the journey here could account for. Even for you."

Julian dipped his head, acknowledging. "I'd already been trying to learn. After that last conversation - that last _real_ one - I knew I had to. I found a copy of Meditations on a Crimson Shadow in the original Kardasi and I read that and the translation you gave me side by side. It was different. I suppose whoever translated it wanted humans to enjoy it."

"Indeed I did," Garak replied.

" _You_ wrote that translation?" Julian's eyes widened, and he stopped in his tracks. "Did you do the same for The Neverending Sacrifice?"

"I used a translation matrix and then I... tweaked," Garak admitted. "There's no other Cardassian I'd trust not to mangle the English language. And no non-Cardassian I'd trust not to mangle our literature."

"I didn't realize," Julian said, frowning. "All this time you've been writing for me, speaking my language, and I've just been giving you English books in the same state as they came to me."

"I'm reminded of a quote you once attributed to your synthetic pen-pal," Garak said. "'Creativity can be seen in any choice between sources, and the application thereof.' My dear, you may not have sewn every stitch, but you chose the right fabric for the right occasion brilliantly."

Julian was smiling again as Garak ushered him into the house, and therefore all was right with the world.

Garak made them both tea, and they sat at the kitchen table. "So are you here on business or pleasure, Doctor?" he asked.

"Hopefully, both," Julian replied. "I'm on leave right now, but I've requested a transfer to the Federation aid outpost."

"You must have left almost as soon as you got my message," Garak said, not quite a question.

"Yes," Julian agreed. "You painted a vivid picture. It gave me a lot to think about, but some things it just made me realize I'd already known." His brown eyes were liquid and bright, and he seemed to be on the edge of saying something else, but then there was a knock at the door.

Of course. The meeting was soon, and Kelas had taken to walking him there. The sudden arrival of Julian had knocked it straight out of Garak's head.

"Ah, forgive me, Doctor," he said, standing. "I'd forgotten about a prior engagement. But you're welcome to come along."

Julian stood up as well, looking wrong-footed. "Oh, if this is a bad time... I didn't even think... I can go."

"Nonsense, my dear," Garak reassured. "Between us, a little inconvenient timing is practically tradition."

The doctor's face lit with a quickly suppressed smile that still left the corners of his eyes and mouth suspiciously crinkled. "You might be right," he said.

Garak opened the door. "Come in for a moment, Kelas. I've just had a very interesting visitor. Doctor Kelas Parmak, this is Doctor Julian Bashir. He's asked to be assigned to the Federation aid outpost. I'm sure you can think of many ways to put this man to work."

The doctors eyed each other, Parmak with a little suspicion and a larger amount of open, welcoming good humor.

"I certainly can," Dr. Parmak agreed.

Julian looked at Parmak with a somewhat dumbfounded expression at first, and then a flicker of what looked almost like queasiness before he put on his best Federation smile.

"What do you need the most help with, medically speaking?" Bashir asked. "I may not have the expertise of a Cardassian doctor, but I've almost certainly spent more time treating Cardassians than most doctors that could be brought in from outside."

Garak wasn't absolutely sure what was going on under the surface - though he had his suspicions, of course - but on the surface, the two doctors were quickly caught up in a discussion of the complex net of concerns they were facing, including the problems of epidemiology, nutrition and infrastructure that weighed on Kelas every day.

As much as Garak thrived on being involved in conversation himself, he was quite content to simply watch these two debate the merits of various approaches. In debate with Doctor Parmak on these same issues, Garak tended to take the position of devil's advocate, to brace Kelas for the opposition he would receive to some of his more _federaji_ ideas. But between Kelas and Julian, the same issues were discussed with more nuance, between many ideologically more similar but practically still very different options.

They spent the whole walk to the Oralian Way meeting engaged in their discussion, and Garak just watched, a tiny smile on his face.

* * *

There was some measure of relief on Julian's face when Parmak left them at Garak's door again and Garak said his goodbyes with a touching of hands that was _yut'amn_ and nothing more, less familiar than the _yut'pUr_ he'd greeted Julian with.

There was still some light left - the Oralian Way was no longer required to meet under cover of darkness, so they'd chosen a more convenient time - and people still wandered the grounds outside.

Julian returned to his seat at the kitchen table with a hint of self-consciousness that begged Garak to prod until he uncovered its source. Of course, Garak realized as he thought over the possibilities, there was an obvious question that hadn't been answered.

"Have you arranged accomodations?" he asked the doctor. "I don't know of any hotels that have been rebuilt in the city, and even if they were, I'm sure they'd be suspicious of a Federation officer wanting to take his leave here. The city barely tolerates the aid outpost."

Julian looked at the floor. "I didn't think about where I'd be staying. I just... came."

Garak felt the need for a better way to say _What were you thinking?_ but in the end, he decided to simply say it with a look.

Julian shook his head slowly, giving an eloquent shrug. "I suppose it was a leap of faith."

It was harder to deny that Garak sometimes felt inclined to those as well, with the energy of the meeting still buoying him up.

He could feel his smile grow softer. "You're welcome to stay here as long as you like."

Julian's face showed relief, but then he braced himself for something else, and reached into his bag, bringing out the sound jammer. His eyes, turned on Garak, held many questions.

Garak approached, and put his hand over Julian's, stopping him from turning the thing on.

"We won't need that, my dear." Slowly, waiting for any sign of refusal, he leaned down to kiss Julian.

Julian leaned in and kissed back as if he had been starved for Elim since they'd parted. Then he pulled back just slightly, to look Garak in the face. "You mean we can be a couple? A real one, in the open? No secrets?"

"Well, I wouldn't say _no_ secrets," Garak demurred. Then he smiled wickedly. "But yes, that's the general idea."

"Oh, Elim," Julian said, and pulled Garak down onto his lap to kiss him again. "This is everything I want."

"You're sure?" Garak asked. "This dusty place? This grey old man who can't give up the habit of paranoia?"

"You're not old," Julian insisted. "And your home is beautiful."

They kissed for what seemed like hours there in Garak's kitchen, with the sounds of birds, insects and playing children drifting in from outside, with none of the muffled distortion the sound jammer would have given it.

* * *

The sky was starry by the time they came around to the prospect of conversation again, and it felt like they were in some kind of limbo in between what they had been and what they might be. The stars in the black sky outside shone on Julian's form in the firm Cardassian bed, which was familiar, but the insects chirped and the air smelled of dust and the garden outside.

Garak had never felt more content than he did now, with the smells of his garden and the smells of Julian blending in the air, and the sounds of the human's soft breaths set against the background noise of Cardassia.

Would he get to keep this? The question hung in the air.

Garak decided to avoid it by dealing with some smaller questions first.

"You were afraid I was involved with Kelas?" Garak asked.

Julian frowned, taking a breath. "I know it would be terribly hypocritical of me to..."

"You also know that I appreciate it anyway. I enjoy your jealousy, because it means you have an investment in us. It doesn't matter what you've been doing with anyone else, as long as you get properly jealous over me." He said it playfully, to transform what was a terrific lie into something with an element of truth in it.

"So does it make sense to you that I sometimes wish you'd get jealous over me?" Julian asked. His smile was bittersweet.

"In that case," Garak said, "I was lying. I've been seething with jealousy over your obsession with Dax since the beginning."

It didn't quite come out as sarcastic as he'd meant it to.

"I know," Julian said. "I could tell from your story."

Garak rubbed at the soft hair behind Julian's ear, and declined to speak the words of the question they both knew needed to be answered.

"I tried to make things work with Dax," Julian said, "I really did, you were so insistent that I pursue someone else, but we realized that she was a substitute. We had lunch together in the Replimat, and we discussed literature, and we were friends with different perspectives that interested the other, and I even loved her, in many ways, but I kept wishing she was you. I think, eventually, if I hadn't heard from you, we would've gotten over that hurdle and found our own balance. But once I knew you wanted me here... she... she saw, and she sent me after you. And then I came, and you had a warm, friendly, brilliant doctor knocking on your door to go and attend a habitual outing, and I remembered how you spoke about him in your message, how similar he was to me, and I was afraid I'd waited too long."

Garak was silent for a long moment before he told Julian, "Kelas is afraid of me. I interrogated him, once."

Julian tucked his nose behind the ridges just below Garak's ear, and said, slightly muffled, "Well, that's one thing I have over him, then. I'm not afraid of you."

"I might argue that his fear is a sign of greater wisdom," Garak said, not quite joking, "but I'd much rather the person who shares my bed not be someone who has nightmares about me."

Garak could feel the little tension that produced in Julian, and thought he was deciding whether to ask if that very situation was how Garak had learned about the nightmares. But then the doctor sighed, soft and content, perhaps deciding the answer didn't matter, or he had no right to it.

Garak would have told him, if he'd asked, that he and Kelas had never shared anything more intimate than two cots side by side in an emergency tent, taking what rest they could while others dug through rubble, trying not to collapse the building further onto the survivors underneath in a delicate feat of engineering that was beyond both the doctor and Garak, who was only there as a pair of relatively unskilled hands. But perhaps Julian would have heard intimacy in that, and perhaps he would not have been so far wrong.

Elim and Kelas were very close, regardless of the fact that Kelas could not bear his touch for anything more intense than their brief palm-to-palm _yut'amn_ farewells.

The warm weight of Julian beside him, now drifting into sleep, was reassuring and sorely needed, but at the same time it had a weight it never had before.

Garak didn't deserve Julian, and if the doctor thought having things out in the open was going to make things easier, he was in for a rude awakening. Existence on Cardassia was a fight, perhaps now more than ever. Things were changing, but in many ways that simply made them more volatile.

But the way Julian had spoken... or rather, the way he _hadn't_ spoken... about his feelings when he'd received Garak's message made Garak sure that he wouldn't be dissuaded anymore.

If Garak had really wanted to push Julian away, he would never have sent that thing. But he had, and now Garak had to deal with the consequences.

Garak had never really been fond of that simple fact of life: the possible consequences of _having_ something included _losing_ that thing. No matter how paranoid one was, no matter how attentively one protected it.

He would have to face facts, eventually. But for now, he sighed, pulled Julian closer, and kissed the middle of his forehead.

Julian sighed contentedly, and settled into his arms.

* * *

Over breakfast, Julian kept smiling, as if he'd just remembered a wonderful secret.

"What are you smiling about?" Garak asked.

"You," Julian replied with a ridiculous smile that Garak fought not to find endearing.

Garak just shook his head and returned attention to his eggs.

"Do you have many plans today?" Julian asked.

"Oh, the usual mending and gardening," Garak answered. "Nothing I can't put off, if you have any better ideas."

"Actually," Julian said, a wicked light in his eyes, "I was thinking of going to visit Doctor Parmak."

"My dear," Garak said with exaggerated shock, "are you trying to make me jealous?"

"I'm merely trying to help your beloved Cardassia, first in your heart," Julian said. His smile was slightly asymmetrical.

"In that case," Garak said, "I'm sure I can keep myself busy."

"Well," said Julian, "just in case you have trouble with that, I've got another short story I thought might interest you." And he reached into his bag, this time for a data rod that he handed over with ceremony.

Garak took it, obscurely pleased that just because they had fewer secrets now, it didn't mean they were going to have fewer codes.

* * *

It was, as he'd thought, one of the King woman's stories, but this one was entitled The Marriage of Mary Russell. It followed Russ as she contemplated her engagement to Sherlock Holmes.

 _He was the least marriageable man I knew. On the other hand, we were already partners. And having that piece of paper - that otherwise meaningless piece of paper - would undoubtedly ease such matters as border crossings, hotel rooms, and claiming one another's body in the event of a fatal mishap._

One of the things Garak tended to appreciate about Russell was how she didn't let her attachments blind her to more practical matters. And she didn't shy away from the prospect of the worst happening. She was, perhaps, Garak's better, in that way.

She made compromises to prioritize Holmes's culture and traditions - not that it seemed to be a great sacrifice for her to do so.

 _"You prefer a Jewish ceremony, then."_

 _I had no even considered the possibility until that moment, and allowed myself a moment to dwell on Holmes,_ kippah _on head, standing beside me beneath the_ chuppah _, signing the_ ketubah _, and stomping on the glass, then me lifted high in a chair -_

 _"I think not."_

She saw through her intended, saw through his very deliberate facade to everything that he cared too much about to reveal to anyone else. Tradition, the home where he was raised, the art and the history of it all.

 _"...My ancestors have been baptised, wed, and buried in the family chapel since the days of Bolingbroke. It would be mildly irritating for the usurper to keep me from my rights."_

 _Sherlock Holmes was the least sentimental person I had ever encountered. If he was admitting to mild irritation, it meant that the longing for his home chapel went bone deep. It mattered not that we had no right to it, or that I was Jewish, or that armed men stood ready to repel us._

They had their own rules, codes, and secrets. They had times when they kept their distance.

 _Affection between us remained a private thing. Private even, occasionally, from one another._

And they woke each other up in the middle of the night to go on important adventures which united families.

 _"Holmes, is that you?"_

 _"Have you another man in the habit of presenting himself at this hour?" rose from the dark below. He sounded revoltingly cheerful._

Sometimes things seemed ominous, sometimes it seemed as if they would get themselves into trouble they couldn't get out of. But in the case of this, their wedding day?

Things turned out better than expected.

After he was finished reading, Garak took the isolinear rod out of the reader and twiddled it in his fingers, staring at it, as if his eyes could derive some clearer message from the amber crystal than the story itself had given him.

Was this really the message it seemed to be?

But then, half the fun of reading these tales was to prod Julian about them afterwards, about what message the doctor had taken from a given book. Just to see if they'd caught the same things, and to speak of themselves and each other without really speaking of their own lives.

On the other hand, a message like this really did need to be spelled out.

More or less.

* * *

Garak greeted Julian in the doorway that evening with an enthusiastic kiss.

"I take it you had a good day," Julian said.

"I did indeed," said Garak. "A friend from outside the city brought me some interesting new cuttings for my garden."

"Good news," Julian said. "And do you want to know how productive my day was?"

"I only have one question."

Julian smiled. "What's that?"

Garak held up the isolinear rod. "Was this a proposal?"

Garak could tell from the twinkle in Julian's eye what he was going to say before he said it. But then, it was the line Garak had set him up for.

"Does it need proposing?" Julian said, grinning.

"Only if you want an answer," Garak told him, making the script firmly their own.

"In that case," Julian said, "Elim Garak, would you enjoin with me?"

Well. He was here, wasn't he? Here for good, if Garak was any judge. There would be no more evading him. And anyway, Garak didn't want to evade. Not any more.

"Yes, my dear Julian," he said. "I would like nothing better."

Julian leaned forward to touch his forehead to Garak's, and then they were both smiling like hopeless fools.

* * *

To walk through Cardassia City holding hands wasn't as unambiguous a declaration as it might have been on Earth, but it still attracted attention beyond what looks Julian got simply for being a human, and one out of Starfleet uniform, at that.

The fact that they barely managed to keep those hopeless smiles off of their faces for two minutes together probably had something to do with it as well.

Garak was still officially assigned to Parmak's medical group, although thankfully they hadn't had much use for unskilled labor in recent weeks. It gave Garak an excuse to walk Julian over to Kelas's offices, though. He meant to offer his tailoring services to the doctors there. Garak felt it made a difference in how confident you could be in a doctor, when their clothing appeared well-stitched.

"So," he said. "When will I get to read the next Mary Russell book?"

"Pirate King?" Julian wrinkled his nose. "Let's skip that one."

"You don't like it?" Garak asked curiously.

"I enjoyed it," he hedged.

Garak narrowed his eyes playfully. "Julian, are you trying to hide something from me?"

"Only my own ridiculousness."

"Oh, my dear doctor, you failed at that endeavor long, long ago."

Julian shrugged self-consciously. "Still, you probably wouldn't even have read Meditations on a Crimson Shadow if not for me. Much less wrote a sensationalized English version."

"No," he said, "but in the end, I'm extraordinarily glad that I did."

"In that case," Julian said, "how do you feel about Earth's tradition of musical theater?"

Garak was afraid he didn't quite know what he was getting himself into.

He held Julian's hand tight in his own, and realized that he wouldn't have it any other way.


End file.
